Fred Langa: Invisible Extraterrestrials? One of World's Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"

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February 23, 2010

Invisible Extraterrestrials? One of World's Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"

The intriguing remark was made by Lord Martin Rees, one of the world's leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is the president of Britain%u2019s Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Rees, who last month hosted the National Science Academy%u2019s first conference on the possibility of alien life, said he believes the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.
%u201CThey could be staring us in the face and we just don%u2019t recognise them. The problem is that we%u2019re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology."

%u201CI suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can%u2019t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can%u2019t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.%u201D
During the conference entitled %u2018The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society%u2019, Rees asked whether the discovery of aliens would cause terror or delight on earth, the Telegraph reported.
However, Frank Drake, the founder of SETI and Drake's Equation, told the conference that satellite TV and the %u201Cdigital revolution%u201D was making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space. The earth is currently surrounded by a 50 light year-wide %u201Cshell%u201D of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions. According to Drake, digital TV signals would look like white noise to a race of observing aliens.
Although the signals have spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they are rapidly vanishing in the wake of digital technology, said Drake. In the 1960s, Drake spearheaded the conversion of the Arecibo Observatory to a radio astronomy center. As a researcher, Drake was involved in the early work on pulsars. Drake also designed the Pioneer plaque with Carl Sagan in 1972, the first physical message sent into space. The plaque was designed to be understandable by extraterrestrials should they encounter it.
Casey Kazan via the Telegraph
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/aliens-may-be-staring-us-in-the-face/582861/2

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